Pencil, pencils, s.n. - From fr. crayon
At the end of the 18th century, N. J. Conte (France) and J. Hardmuth (Austria) succeeded, through blends of graphite and clay, to obtain different varieties of pencil (which bears their name) with varying degrees of softness (v. The hardness of the pencil differs from H = hard (or strength) to B = black and is numbered from 1 to 7 (7B = the softer).
Depending on the degree of pencil or softness of the pencil, very accurate linear drawings (Holbein, Ingres, sculptor drawings) or drawings with subtle shifts from light to shadow (Degas, Dufy) are obtained.
In Romania, the pencil drawing enjoyed great appreciation; Nicolae Grigorescu left thousands of drawings, but also from Luchian, Ressu, Pallady, Iser, Steriadi, Tonitza, St. Dimitrescu, s.a.
Pencils can also be colored; drawings of this kind acquire, through the addition of color, other aesthetic characters, approaching the watercolor and sometimes the painting